ISCA Archive ICSLP 1990
ISCA Archive ICSLP 1990

Perception of mora sounds in Japanese by non-native speakers of Japanese

Yukie Masuko, Shigeru Kiritani

The listening test was performed on Japanese mora sounds with learners of Japanese. Their native languages were Chinese, Thai, Indonesian and Korean. Word accent pattern, vowel length, voiceless consonant length, nasal consonants and the nasalized vowel were examined. The results showed that word accent pattern was identified better by the subjects of tone languages than the other groups of subjects. Vowel length was identified better than voiceless consonant length, but the difference from their native languages were not found. According to nasals, two types of errors (confusions and omissions & additions) were examined. Compared to the Indonesian subjects, the Chinese and the Thai subjects made more errors of omission & addition, while the Korean subjects made more errors of both types. It is supposed that the monosyllable structure of Chinese and Thai have relation to the errors of omission & addition.